


Have You Noticed

by bakerstreetafternoon



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Austria, Hamburg, M/M, One Shot, Paris - Freeform, Slow Burn, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-21 23:18:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11954778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakerstreetafternoon/pseuds/bakerstreetafternoon
Summary: It is perfectly fine for Paul to sleep on John and fix John's tie and stare into John's eyes while singing love song after bloody love song for years on end, but he's never mentioned Whatever This Is and the clear implication is that neither of them should.Set during the filming of Help!, 1965.“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you." - Ernest Hemingway





	Have You Noticed

It must total days, or even weeks now - the amount of time John has spent practicing for a conversation with Paul that he's quite sure will never happen.

But he can't stop, can't stop turning the words over and over in his mind, tasting them in his mouth. Can't stop thinking about what he'd say, thinking about how to bring it up, how to finally fucking address the thing that's hung between them for the past four years - or even more, oh God, even more. The fantasies of saying something begin to lurk tantalizingly near the front of his mind, the beginning of any one of many imagined conversations always dangerously on the tip of his tongue. It's worse now. It's worse than it's ever been and John thinks that's because it's more dangerous now, more real. It seems like it's getting more and more frequent that the two of them slide briefly sideways into the alternate reality where they're

_(fucking)_

where their relationship is different. John feels it happen whenever Paul reaches casually under his chin to straighten his tie or brushes hair behind his ears or when their hands touch as they sing into the same microphone and neither of them pull away. He feels it happen, that strange sideways tilt, when Paul sucks on a joint that's just been in John's mouth and licks his lips where the joint has touched, where John's own lips just were. He feels it happen when Paul falls asleep on yet another bloody aeroplane and his head tips sideways to rest on John's shoulder, lashes long and long and long. It's more dangerous now. It's more dangerous because it's more possible. It's more dangerous because they have so much more to lose.

In Austria, now, John feels the veil between the regular world and the other place, the place where he's with

_(in love with)_

Paul, getting more and more insubstantial. There are long breaks between scenes with no instruments and few girls to distract him and his mind, his ready clever treacherous mind, just wants him to practice, practice, practice the conversation that won't happen.

_Say, Paul, we should talk_

_How about it, Paulie, I_

 L _ook, do you have half a minute because we've got to talk about whatever this is_

The sun glares deliriously off the white snow, blinding them all as they horse around on the mountain to Dick Lester's direction, and in between bouts of snowblindness John watches Paul's face and imagines what it would do if he really did come out with any one of the naff, pompous speeches his mind keeps assembling against his will. All of the words he can think to string together to try to engage Paul in a talk about Whatever This Is sound overly formal. They sound lame, hollow, practiced. They all sound ridiculous, and not least because the two of them don't talk about Whatever This Is. Never have done. Probably never will do. Talking about feelings isn't what they do together, full stop, and talking about Whatever This Is is obviously absolutely forbidden. It is perfectly fine for Paul to sleep on John and fix John's tie and stare into John's eyes while singing love song after bloody love song for years on end, but he's never mentioned Whatever This Is and the clear implication is that neither of them should.

Brief escapes to smoke grass behind corners and snowbanks and ski-lift equipment are keeping the four of them sane through the long hours of filming. It makes everything - the mountain, the film crew, the ski resort itself - take on a touch of magic, and that's what John likes best about grass, that it lends a touch of magic to a man who at times feels buried in his mansion in the London stockbroker suburbs, a man who has always needed that touch of magic from something or other to feel really alive. The grand piano the filmmakers have hauled halfway up the ski hill for Ticket to Ride amazes him, sitting there in the middle of the snow, surrounded by the soaring spruce and pine and whatever the hell other kinds of trees are on this mountain, looking out of place but somehow perfectly natural. They've only been a few weeks out of the studio and their own instruments are back at the hotel, but Paul can hardly keep his hands off the piano, kneeling in the snow in front of it to knock out pretty little fragments of melodies between takes.  Instruments are like women to Paul, he has to touch them to see if he can make something happen. His hands are red and chapped and clumsy with the cold but the melodies sound lovely to John as everything that comes out of Paul sounds lovely to John. The things that come out of Paul- the bits of music that come out of Paul, seemingly without effort - make John feel envious and proud and aroused at the same time.

Paul's half-numb fingers hit discordant keys and he laughs into the crisp air and sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. The speeches start unbidden inside John's head again.

He desperately wants them to stop. He feels afraid that the more often he thinks _hey, Paul, what is it with us_ or _do you remember Paris, our Paris_ the more likely it seems that it all might eventually spill out of him one night. All of it. And in the midst of all this, over the last four years of this fruitless practice he's had plenty of bloody time to picture how that would go, hasn't he? He's had plenty of time even to evaluate locations for the conversation that isn't going to happen. He's had plenty of time to imagine Paul's shocked, embarrassed face in a whole variety of potential settings. He's imagined this conversation happening in EMI Studios, Twickenham, at Kenwood, and in a variety of increasingly luxurious hotel rooms. In every variation of his imagining, Paul's horrified face stays the same and John wants the speeches to stop before something terrible happens. Something terrible that would forever ruin Whatever This Is, something so terrible that it could break the spell and fracture not only the alternate reality where they are

_(lovers)_

different, but also the real world - the current world. The world where they are partners and best mates. John couldn't handle it if one of those worlds collapsed, if both of them collapse he thinks he might go mad.

And, Christ, he also wants them to stop because they are some bloody awful speeches for a man that fancies himself a writer. 

*

Paris features in about half of his scripts for the conversation that isn't going to happen. Not that Paris had been the first time that he had thought about kissing Paul, but Paris was the first time he had almost really done it. Paris was the first time he had sensed the sideways tilt into the different place and had been almost sure that Paul had felt it too.

The first time he had thought about kissing Paul had been Hamburg, directly following a shouting match about Paul and Stu's constant bickering. Paul had flung up his arms and stormed out and George had shrugged his thin shoulders, seeming wise beyond seventeen as George would always seem wiser than his years. "He's only jealous," George had said, jerking his chin in the direction of the door. "Jealous of you and Stu, you know. He'll get over it."

John's mouth had hung open. The realization had stunned him and with it, the sensation of a bolt sliding home into a lock. Jealous. Paul was jealous, and over _him_. His first reaction was that it made a lot of sense, his second was a rush of unconstrained arousal directly to the trousers. He'd sank down bonelessly on Pete's shitty little bed, which happened to be the closest,  feeling that a lot of things were suddenly quite clear. It had been like putting on his glasses after a long session of squinting into a crowd.

After that, everything Paul did was erotic to John. The way he walked, the way he smoked, the way he held his bass, the way he jostled the others a bit to be able to sit next to John when they were able to hit some bars in their scarce and precious free time. The way his beautiful mouth tightened almost imperceptibly when John touched Stu or spoke to him a certain way. That had been the most erotic, and so John had pushed it farther and farther.  When John sat next to Stu on an amp, the long lengths of their thighs pushed comfortably together, the expression on Paul's face turned him on. He liked Stu - Stu had been the first man he'd been sure he was attracted to - but nothing could compete with the rush he felt from that expression on Paul's face. No one could compare with Paul.

And it had only gotten worse.

He had started out with not-very-alarming thoughts of getting hard because of Paul's jealousy, had moved on to semi-alarming thoughts of what  Paul's cock would taste like and what kind of expressions he could put on Paul's face _then_ , and had gradually been subsumed by very alarming thoughts indeed. By that fall, 1961 it was, he had been gone. By that fall he had been pretty certain that he was in love with Paul McCartney. He hadn't just wanted to touch Paul - though he did, at every available opportunity that could be passed off as innocent or accidental - he wanted Paul. He _needed_ Paul.  Paul was the anchor in his harmony and the beat in his rhythm. As those months had passed John had gradually become used to the idea that he needed Paul only slightly less than he needed oxygen and perhaps slightly more than he needed food and water.

He didn't even find the idea disturbing.

And then ... Paris.

For a lad of nearly twenty-one he oughtn't to have had such butterflies in his stomach when he'd asked Paul to go to Spain with him. It was a marker of the absurd situation that he could be so bashful to ask something of Paul, Paul who knew him better than anyone ever had and probably ever would.  But as he'd said _it's me birthday in October, do you fancy a trip?_ a hot flush had burned on his cheekbones and his breath had caught in his throat a bit. It had felt - well, a little like asking a bird on a date. Exactly like that.

_What, with the band?_

_No - just with me. Just us._

John remembers different parts of the trip at different times. In the backs of taxis and limos any time he's seated next to Paul he remembers the hitchhiking. Paul's easy touch on his knee, their elbows pressed together, sending little jolts and shocks up John's spine. Drawing, he remembers sketching at sidewalk cafes on the Left Bank and looking up to catch Paul watching him intently. He remembers the discovery of how easily he can make Paul blush. Even in 1965 the autumn-smell of the city and the Seine is with him always in some corner of his mind. Paris bewitched them both; they'd never made it to Spain. John had already suspected, and would come to know in the fullness of time, that he would always be a man easily bewitched where Paul McCartney was concerned.

And the bed. Of the many beds they've shared, John remembers that bed very well - he thinks that had been the best year, the best bed. That had been the year when the world was before them. The year the world was at their feet instead of shrieking and breaking down their door. That had been the last year - perhaps ever - that Lennon and McCartney were just John and Paul and not yet prophets of a new and strange era. They had lain long nights together talking about the future as the moon shone through the window, exactly as John had imagined young married couples would do, snatches of song and rhythm floating out of Paul the way they always did, floating into the dark of the city of light - but not really into the dark. Paul's melodies didn't float away with John there to catch them and hold them near his heart.   

No one had known them in Paris. No one had cared. No one had expected anything of them, John had not expected anything of himself. They might have been street buskers or art students or Foreign Legionnaires. They had been free.

He had touched Paul a lot in Paris, although never in the way that he really wanted to. His shoulders, his arms, his face, his hair. He had come the closest he has ever come to kissing Paul in Paris, in the middle of the night in some chilly alley with the grey buttresses of Saint-Séverin flying into the dark crisp air above them. Paul had stopped to piss against the wall and John, his head light with French beer and pure joy, had felt possessed with love and madness and had almost, almost, almost seized Paul and kissed him right there, with his fly open, kissed him as the gargoyles looked silently down on the alley in the oldest part of the city where lovers had passed since time immemorial.

Wanted to. Hadn't. Had been stopped, at the last moment, by fear and by fucking stone cold rationality. Because what it if it broke the spell? What if it broke them? What then?

Some days he wishes he'd done it, done it and maybe had done with all of it. Spared himself the last four years of making milksop doe eyes at Paul. He should have kissed Paul and let Paul hit him in the face and call him a queer. Spared himself the ignominy of feeling led around by the cock or by the heart or both. Perhaps it would have hurt less if it had been over in a moment, just like an adhesive bandage.

Some days he's grateful that he had better sense. Grateful that his better angels had prevailed (they so rarely do). Because he has Paul, or half-has him, and half is better than none at all. Because by the end of that trip, by the end of that fall, he had been _very_ certain that he was in love with Paul McCartney. The beat in his rhythm. The anchor in his fucking harmony.  

*

It's their second-to-last night in Obertauern and the Beatles are hosting a party for the cast and crew. This is the sort of thing that John is a bit weary of - the endless bloody socializing, the same questions repeated as if on a loop - but he's nicely glazed with pot and the Hotel Edelweiss is lovely, anyway.  There's lots of wood and warm light and hot cocktails, just the sort of thing you'd want to come back to after a long day on a freezing mountain. The grand piano has been returned to its rightful place.

The Beatles mix through the crowd. John puts on a good show for awhile but he is on autopilot; he's entered a stage where he prefers to spend time only with the rest of the band, the only people on earth who can sympathize. George and Ringo seem tired too but Paul floats around effortlessly, chatting up girls, trying a few words of German leftover from Hamburg here and there. Paul rarely tires of parties and never tires of charming conversation, a skill John appreciates all the more when the rest of them start to flag.

John accepts a glass of grappa (fourth? Fifth?) from a passing waitress and sinks down on the piano bench. The crowd is still thick but the night is getting late and it's been a bloody long day up and down that mountain. He has a bit of an idea for a song, but he knows that if he so much as looks at the piano too hard he'll be surrounded.  The perils of fame.

At least the speeches inside his head have mostly stopped, the madness has passed for now. He's looking across the room into the fireplace and sipping his grappa when Paul makes his way over.

"I've had it," he says abruptly, looking down at John. "I'm knackered of all this."

John raises an eyebrow. "All what, the wine, women and song?"

"The party, I've had it. Years of dull conversation, no birds worth the pulling. I think I've put in my hours. You want to work?"

"And just what do you call today, then?"

"Y'know," Paul motions with his hands. "I don't mean acting. Do you want to work on a song a bit, is what I mean." He rubs a finger across his bottom lip.

From his perspective on the piano bench, looking up at Paul (and probably having to do with the grappa), Paul appears wreathed in warm firelight. The slightly put-upon expression he is wearing doesn't alter how beautiful John finds him, now and always. "Uh, sure, son. Sure. Did you have anything in mind or will it be me doing all the work again, you lazy bugger?"

"I've a few bits nearly ready for either the can or the bin."

"Surely not the bin! Not Paul McCartney songs. They're marvellous, chart-toppers one and all, I'm certain of it. In exchange for me services you'll fetch us another glass of this grappa, won't you?"

Paul takes the glass out of his hand wryly and sets it on the piano. "Oh come now, you'll be no use to me like that."

"Aye, and I live to be of use to you of course," John says, meeting Paul's eyes for a fraction of a second, trying to make it sound cocky and falling a touch flat. But Paul laughs anyway, seizes John's wrist, hauls him to his feet.

"Come on. We'll cause a bloody mutiny if the others work out we've left so we're best out now while nobody's really looking."

Their room is on the other side of the hotel. It, too, contains a lot of wood, as well as instruments, ashtrays and screwed-up bits of paper with things scribbled on them. A glass door opens to a tiny balcony sticking off the side of the hotel, looking out over the mountain. John had dragged a wing chair out there this morning and it's still out there now, but covered with a light coating of still-falling snow. The guitars seem to sound different with the snow all around, muffled and quiet as though they play for themselves alone.

Paul picks up his guitar and sits on his bed. Paul never gets tired of this part, never gets tired of showing off to John what he's come up with, and to tell the truth John never tires of it either. As long as John is the one Paul pulls out of a crowd for the dual purposes of showing off and asking for help, John can stand what he doesn't have.

John grabs his guitar by the neck and sits cross-legged on his own bed, watching Paul impatiently.  "Well, come on now. A man can't be expected to wait around all night you know."

"Well considering that you have to sleep in this room, I think you'll wait around quite a long time," Paul says absently, twisting a tuning peg and plucking his E string.

"Oh, so it's hostage-taking now is it. Don't make me fetch the _gendarme_."

" _Gendarme_ ," Paul says, strumming G, D, E minor, "are French, so you'd need to go a long way. Which would be difficult if you're a hostage. _Gendarme,_ you remember Paris, don't you?"

John opens his mouth and something very unfortunate nearly falls out. He exhales through his nose and shakes his head hard, once, to clear it. "All right, all right, go on."

" _Have you noticed,"_ Paul sings, _"there's something when we touch?"_

John stays quiet and listens. It's a pretty little chord progression, nothing really special in the way of innovation, but pretty.

_"Have you noticed there's something when we touch? And do you know how you mean so much to me? I can never find the words to write or proper things to say, but I have to trust the songs to get through to you anyway."_

All right, so it barely scanned, rhymed, or fit with the tune. That was normal, Paul often made up nonsense while he was trying a song out. _Yesterday_ had been _Scrambled Eggs_ for weeks. Paul plays the new song through to the end, filling in lots of missing bits with repetition and variation of the opening line "Have you noticed there's something when we touch?"

He finishes, but his fingers don't leave the strings. He looks right at John, his gaze seeming very hazel, dark and direct in John's grappa haze. "Do you like it?"

"Abysmal lyric," John says promptly.  "It doesn't fit. And the melody is nice but it needs a middle or it's all too samey-samey, you know. Play us the first bit again."

Paul lets his head roll back on his shoulders and a sigh rushes out of him and all the way up to the wood-paneled ceiling. "John. You daft sod. You absolutely daft sod."

"Pardon?"

"John -" Paul plays one chord with some force, a strangled misshapen sound, and quickly lays his guitar on the bed as though it's burned him. He gets to his feet in one smooth motion and before John can register what's taking place, Paul bends over swiftly and his hands are on his face, Paul's lips are on his mouth, _Paul_ 's _lips are on his mouth._

John's brain short circuits. His hand tightens on the neck of his guitar until the strings threaten to cut his fingers, reminding him to cast it aside. It's between him and Paul and he's never cared less about a guitar than at this moment. The thump of several hundred pounds’ worth of rosewood hitting the carpeted floor doesn't bother him a bit because Paul's hands are on his face, Paul's mouth is on his mouth, and once the guitar is gone he can scramble to his feet and kiss Paul properly.

 _Christ oh Christ oh Christ Paul,_ John’s brain supplies, the only sort of prayer he’s managed in years. All of the many words he has practiced are forgotten and _Christ, Paul_ is all he can come up with so he says it aloud, again and again. Paul makes a little satisfied musical murmur against his mouth as John pulls their long lengths together, presses their stomachs together, and he can feel everything. Paul’s stupid knobbly sweater, his stubble, his skin. Paul’s hair brushes his cheeks as they kiss and every place they touch, down to every hair, feels like a particle of light entering John.

Paul raises a hand and grips the back of John’s neck. “You fool,” he says laughingly, teasingly. “Weren’t you listening?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written in ages since I deleted all my old work in a fit of self-conscious pique but THERE YOU GO, you know. Hold your breath and start again. If you can muster yourself to leave a comment so I know it wasn't in vain, that'd be much appreciated. 
> 
> This little work is totally for savageandwise, who (a) has the prettiest writing, the kind that inspires you to get off your ass and make something, and (b) is just a kickass inspirer, rper, & etc. Thank you. 
> 
> If you liked this you can come find me on tumblr @bakerstreetafternoon. I love chatting (probably too much) and I know a lot about the Beatles (probably too much).


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